5 Simple Steps to Understanding Your Data & Analytics

It’s not surprising that IT leaders face mounting pressure to support new business initiatives with real-time analytics. Your organization may even be tempted to make large investments in hardware, software, or talent to tackle the challenges. But before taking any initiatives, implement the five actions below to not only tackle but embrace these challenges.

1. Classify All The Data Analytics You Have

Take the opportunity of a change in your IT infrastructure that will force you to look at your data to tag and classify it. For instance, migrating to the cloud, upgrading on-premises infrastructure or changing cloud providers is a good triggering event.
· Who captures the analytics?
· Where is it?
· Do you retrieve it from your data center or via API?

2. Identify Valuable Information

Knowing the location of your valuable data is just as critical as knowing who the decision makers are in your organization. Make sure to group your data (at least logically) around business objectives, for instance the data need for a new customer service or a new regulation, such as the GPDR (General Data Protection Regulation) where there will be no grace period.

3. Group Data Around Business Objectives

Always keep your data organized around business objectives so they support your strategic activities, not by type, storage location, owner etc.
For example, group them around:
· Business forecast
· Infrastructure optimization
· New product launch

Start with a business objective in mind and track back to the set of data analytics needed and focus on this to get the right information you need to act. For instance, if you have a Governance and Policy Management strategy, determine the actions you will have to take and then the associated data insights:
· Actions: Encrypt PII data, set policies to access intellectual property content, eliminate unnecessary copied of sensitive data.
· Insights: where the PII, IP and redundant copies are, who has access to them, when were they last accessed, etc.

5. Continuous Improvement Towards Your Business and IT Transformation

Keep up with the data analytics discipline and make it part of your DNA.
Assess if it:
· Is needed for one project vs. group needs
· Is outsourced vs. in house data
· Should be integrated with an app or standalone
· Provides insights for users to decide or is part of a fully automated decision accessed etc.

With the growing data challenges comes many opportunities and this is the time for IT leaders to step up and expand their responsibilities as they prepare their company for Digital Transformation.